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Saturday, July 14, 2007

Global warming trivia

Global warming – apportioning blame – the old way

I doubt if there is one person alive that is not aware that global warming is here to stay – unless we change our ways – even if we do change, it isn’t going anywhere – the planet is warming up, with all that means – rising sea levels, drought and death – ours if we don’t act fast.

Is it necessary, though, to debate the size of the carbon footprint of a bottle of water – I mean haven’t we more urgent things to stop, or at least think about. Every day, millions of cars carry a single driver down a route passed by some form of public transport. Now, I’m no scientist, but I’m wiling to bet that the CF left by those drivers in their endless queues at countless lights and white lines is a whole lot bigger and more significant than that left by a crateful of bottles of spring water.

Pretty soon the finger pointing will start, if it hasn’t already. Like smokers, drinkers of bottled water will become a social pariah, occupying the space vacated by wearers of real fur. We’ll start getting pots of paint flung over us, or worse, bottles of water. It has got to stop before it gets hold.

The ‘looneys’ will begin a sort of environmental MacCarthyism – we’ll get asked if we drink bottled water when being interviewed for a job teaching, working in a bank, or anything in the public eye.

This is not as crackpot a suggested scenario as it might at first seem: if our chief reaction to GM is to apportion blame rather than be constructive and supportive, we’ll lose our focus, and it will spiral even further out of control. Giving people guilt complexes isn’t going to work. We belong together on Earth, and we must beat this thing together, or it will destroy us together.Robert L. Fielding